Then there had been a quarrel, over a new technique which the younger man had developed. There was no need, he claimed, to wait for the immemorial nine months between conception and birth, now that the entire process was under control. If certain precautions were taken to safeguard the health of the human foster mother who carried the fertilized egg, there was no reason why pregnancy should last more than two or three months.
Needless to say, this claim excited wide attention. There was even facetious talk of “instant clones.” Mortimer Keynes had not disputed his colleague’s techniques, but he deplored any attempt to put them into practice. With a conservatism that some thought curiously inappropriate, he agrued that Nature had chosen that nine months for very good reasons, and that the human race should stick to it.
Considering the violence that cloning did to the normal process of reproduction, this seemed a rather strange attitude, as many critics hastened to point out. This only made Sir Mortimer even more stubborn, and reading between the lines Duncan felt fairly certain that the surgeon’s expressed objections were not the real ones. For some unknown and probably unknowable reason, he had experienced a crisis of conscience; what he was now opposing was not merely the shortening of the gestation period, but the entire process of cloning itself.
The younger man, of course, disagreed completely. The debate had become more and more bitter-also more and more public, as it was inflamed by sensation-seeking hangers-on who wanted to see a good fight.
After one abortive attempt at reconciliation, the partnership split up, and the two men had never spoken to each other again. A major problem at medical congresses for the last decade had been to ensure that they were not present simultaneously at any meeting.
That had been the end of Mortimer Keynes’s active career. The famous clinic he had established was closed down, though he still kept his Harley Street office and did a little consultation. His ex-partner, who had a remarkable gift for acquiring public and private funds, promptly established a new base and continued his experiments.
As Duncan read on, with increasing curiosity and excitement, he realized that here was the man he needed. Whether he would take advantage of the highspeed cloning technique he could decide later; it was certainly interesting to know that the option existed, and that if he wished, he could return to Titan months in advance of his original schedule.
Now to locate Sir Mortimer’s ex-colleague and successor. It was lucky that the search did not have to rely on the name alone, for it was one that occurred in some form or other half a million times in the Earth Directory.
But he had only to consult the Classified Section-often referred to, for some mysterious reason lost in the depths of time, by the utterly meaningless phrase “Yellow Pages.”
And so, on a small island off the east coast of Africa, Duncan discovered
El Hadj Yehudi ben Mohammed.
He had scarcely made arrangements to fly to Zanzibar when a small bombshell arrived from Titan. It bore Colin’s identification number, but he was unable to make sense of it until he realized that it was both in cipher and the Makenzie private code. Even after two processing trips through his
Minisec, it was still somewhat cryptic: PRIORITY AAA SECURITY AAA
NO RECORD OF ANY SHIPMENT TITANrrB REGISTERED BUREAU OF RESOURCES LAST
TWO
YEARS. POSSIBLE INFRINGEMENT FINANCE REGULATIONS IF PRIVATE SALE FOR
CONVERTIBLE SO LARS NOT APPROVED BY BANK OF TITAN. PERSISTENT RUMOR
MAJOR
DISCOVERY ON OUTER MOON. ASKING HELMER TO INVESTIGATE. WILL REPORT
SOONEST.
COLIN.
Duncan read the message several times without any immediate reaction. Then, slowly, the pieces of the puzzle began to drift around into new configurations, and a pattern started to emerge. It was one that Duncan did not like at all.
Naturally, Colin would have gone to Armand Helmer, Controller of Resources; the export of minerals came under his jurisdiction. Moreover, Armand was a geologist-in fact, he had made one small titanite find himself, of which he was inordinately proud.
Was it conceivable that Armand himself might be involved? The thought flashed through Dancan’s mind, but he dismissed it instantly. He had known
Armand all his life and despite their many political and personal differences, he did not for a moment believe that the Controller would get involved in any illegality-especially one that concerned his own Bureau.
